Contractors, Cuts and Crap Pay

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Contractors, Cuts and Crap Pay

I’m a bit late on the uptake here – drinkingcricketing commitments in Croydon at the weekend sadly kept me away from the launch of the Lambeth Living Wage campaign, staged at Windrush Square at the weekend.

The Living Wage campaign, as organised by London Citizens, effectively calls for a:

“London weighted minimum wage, which takes into account the higher living costs of London. The figure currently stands at £7.60 per hour; £1.87 above the National Minimum Wage.”

It is a fine principle, and one which you would expect any local authority to be fully signed up to, especially so with May 6th creeping up on us ever closer. There’s votes in them there local authority jobs, donchta know.

Speeches were made, cheesy grins were gurned for the cameras and the electorate in Lambeth can now votesleep easy, knowing that their Nu Labour cabinet fully backs the pledge to pay council staff a Living Wage for London.

Hang on – what about all those outsourced council jobs, I hear you ask?

“A young chap from London Citizens read out a formal statement saying: ‘Councillor Reed, you told us some months ago that all contracted staff in Lambeth were paid a Living Wage but we have found out that this is not the case. We met with the Head of Procurement and she told us that Veolia staff are not receiving it.”

Blimey.

The problem you see when you privatiseoutsource so many local authority jobs as part of a mutualisation of local government, is that you also effectively outsource responsibility and accountability.

Not on the pay roll, Guv? Don’t expect a Living Wage then.

This is an incredibly important issue for Lambeth. The borough currently has the seventh worst level of child poverty in London. We are electing politicians on May 6th who have the power to come up with a local solution to help raise income levels in Lambeth. Not paying a London Living Wage is only going to perpetuate the levels of child poverty in the borough.

Maybe the solution would be to outsource the @lambeth_council cabinet posts as well. This would wipe out the existence of the career politician in Lambeth, able to trouser just short of £40k for a local politicians job.

“We extended it to all staff earning below it when we took over and are signed up to extending it to contract staff.”

So the Living Wage is “signed up” to be extended to contract staff, but it still hasn’t been rolled out. Which is a bit rubbish really, considering the meet ‘n greet around Windrush Square was also an election friendly opportunity meet the voters in Lambeth.

And they say the future is a coop council, with more services outsourced to save more money.